It’s not often I have to do something like that though. I’ve been thinking I need to use my actual Kindle again more for reading. I prefer reading either on my zfold or the actual kindle; they’re both about the same screen size. I don’t really want a 13" book, I just wanted to be able to have one open to reference during a zoom book club. I’ve been spending far too much time reading Reddit lately and need to use the kindle so I’ll actually read my book.
Though, when I’m reading for book club, it’s nice to have the book and one note open split screen so I can take notes, but the app does that nicely.
In the latest episode of “which platform doesn’t suck” I attempt to print more worksheets:
My Tab S7+ was upstairs so I grabbed the Pro X to do school today. I’m reminded why I prefer Android for this as the Pro X stumbles all over itself trying to start the Android subsystem so I can use the Kindle app. I give up and open the cloud reader, which pops up just as Android kindle decides it’s going to work. Fine.
After the read aloud, I decide to see if I can find some pre-writing worksheets for the 4 year old. He wants to be able to do them on his iPad, so I attempt to print into OneNote from Edge. I apparently didn’t install or set up or something onenote for windows 10 on my last restore, so I only have Desktop onenote and don’t see the print to onenote option in my list of printers. So I save the PDF to onedrive and go over to OneNote to insert a printout from there. Error. Lovely. Don’t feel like figuring it out and I’d prefer the little guy use pencil/crayon on paper anyway, so I send it to our wifi printer. It actually works! But the second worksheet does not.
Okay, since I had to go upstairs to get the print out, I grabbed the S7+ to try from there. The worksheets are saved to onedrive now, so I open the one that hasn’t printed and give it a try. Error. Cancel. Cancelling gets stuck. Cancel from the printer. Tab is now stuck attempting to cancel and won’t print anything else.
Guess I’ll try inserting the printout into onenote on android then. Works fine.
Just tried printing (paper) the second worksheet from the surfacebook, worked!
Conclusion: OneNote on Android works better than it does on windows when it comes to inserting documents. Windows still connects to actual printers better. The average consumer is not going to separate the experience from the platform and is going to return the printer or the tablet or the laptop or all of the above. Zero parts of that experience were frictionless.
Rediscovering Dex since I have no need to bring my beast of a graphics workstation laptop to the job site. And there are a ton of empty monitors there due to WFH.
Trying this on my work assigned S20 which is the only device, (aside from the laptop) that can network to my corporate IT.
Pretty much only have to use Teams (which works well in mobile), OneDrive, intranet sites, web browser, email, and MS Office (which has lousy Android ports).
Cutting and pasting seems hit or miss between apps, which seems to be the biggest drawback for me so far. For Teams meetings, I can kind of use the partial screenshot via gallery to paste into OneNote (sort of).
Has anyone else found Office to be viable with Dex as a daily driver?
It was terrible then. There are so many missing features, that it’s only good if you want to do very basic things, and even then some of those (like copy and paste) don’t work properly.
I ended up using AndroOffice, which is a port of LibreOffice. And you can tell as the UI is unchanged and awful. They just seemed to taken LibreOffice on dumped it into an apk, I guess with some sort of wrapper. And it’s not even by the LibreOffice developers - they just link to it on their site. But it works.
With Dex overall, I found there to be a certain sluggishness to it.
My office needs were always relatively simple. I’m disappointed by the state of OneNote, but it’s workable. Teams was fine. Easier in some regards. I don’t really copy/paste stuff, so I never ran into those issues. Dex, and Android in general, have some weird text selection interactions that don’t work reliably across apps. Some will let you click and drag, some need the long press on a word then drag the handles.
Dex won big time today. I finally broke down and upgraded from my little 15" portable FHD monitor to a 27" QHD one. It’s beautiful. I used emeals to plan and grocery shop on a giant monitor with a mouse and keyboard and it was sooooooo much nicer than being cramped on the phone screen, or even being on the 12" tablet screen. Emeals doesn’t even have a web app, it’s Android or iOS only, so I couldn’t do this from a windows machine. And this is not the only app I use that does this. I’m to the point where I rely on more mobile apps than I do desktop apps. Android apps on Windows just aren’t going to get there fast enough.
Wow, I had flashbacks to (possibly myself) complaining about 5-6 years ago that young students were trying to complete all sorts of tasks that I imagined could only be done on a desktop. I remember thinking they were making their lives harder for themselves by trying to use such small screens for tasks that I felt needed a more complex UI.
Might have been on the old tablet pc forum or somewhere else but things really have moved on - Apps designed for a tablet interface aren’t just popular because they are so much cheaper than their Windows/Apple counterparts but the ones designed from the ground up as tablet specific now perform their tasks so much better.
Anyhow, I’ve liked using DEX - but only after I found the bluetooth keyboard that my partner didn’t want to use anymore with her iPad. Still getting used to Dex and the possibilities it offers.
Yeah, I never imaged mobile apps would take over, but I was at CES the year the motorola Atrix first came out, and had that idea planted in my brain with all the wonder and awe of a first time CES visit. I’ve always been into the idea of a personal box with multiple docking stations depending on the situation, and I’m always going to have a phone, so here we are.
I have a 27" QHD monitor, MX anywhere mouse, and Keychron K2 Mechanical Keyboard. There are times I’m on my phone and realize I need a bigger canvas to do what I want to do, or a nice clacky keyboard to say what I want to say, so I go to my desk and plug in. Getting a text invoice with a scheduling request for the next service, then opening venmo and google calendar in two other windows to take care of things and get the reply all done without having to switch around apps on the fold screen is far more comfortable for me. And I don’t even know if I can make a venmo payment from a windows computer. I think that’s another app only thing to do.
It does also seem that a lot of new services are coming out mobile only. My kids can use their math program in a web browser, but the parent control/reporting is only available in the parent portal mobile app. I get notifications for my website in the Wix mobile app that I’d have to log in to the webpage to see on windows.
I am SO many steps behind you on this but it also sounds like the computer on a card system that was proposed a few years ago - there is now a Windows USB you can plug into different accessories but you’re right - the phone is becoming the hub and here, DEX is possibly making quiet progress that others aren’t matching or even thinking about.
I’m just tonight getting my new phone set up - I’ve had to sign into my old phone to make sure it was me / verify on my iMac for my Google account / verify on the galaxy S8 that I am also me with a new Galaxy device - and I also forgot my fancy new pin as soon as I’d drawn it so I had to reset (by connecting the new phone to my zbook for the factory reset to actually work) and start all over again.
5 devices just to get the 5th and newest up and running - whereas ONE device and various peripherals would save all that mess.
Like I said before - you are SO far ahead of me on this.